The wading is the hardest part

The story:

I had this one wrong for a long time. I never cared
one iota for the song and I never owned the album it
was on, so I never saw the name of it in print until
years after its release. I suppose if I had listened
carefully to the rest of the lyrics, I might have
noticed something was amiss, but I had no interest
whatsoever in doing that. I just always **sumed Tom
was using a swimming/wading analogy to explain
something about love and romance.